"Home" schooling!

Yep, that's me.

When we first started home schooling I expected it to have the usual hours of my school in Chicago, maybe a bit less. It turns out that without lunch breaks and a bunch of teens constantly talking it goes by a lot quicker. Now, I really miss that bunch of teens and it is hard, but after only 3 hours of constant work I was done for the day. Yay! I was expecting to be able to rest but, no. No, 'absolutely not young lady'. We went on a hike that took up the rest of the day.

Don't get me wrong, I love hiking and we did have a great time. There is, however, that one moment when your body thinks at you like,"we're still walking" that happened a lot on this trip.

We decided we wanted to go see the hermitage where Saint Francis would to pray in a quiet place where he could be completely alone ( can't blame him really ).

Now, I think that it's important for you to know that the hike was supposed to be 50min long. HAHAHA very funny. We hiked for about 20min and then stopped at a great restaurant on the side of the road called 'La Stalla', great place, the food was amazing, it was like eating extremely high quality comfort food.

After that my mom went on ahead so she could get there first (I can't imagine why). My dad and I trudged along behind her. Ok, so it might have been the fact that, instead of through a forest or a prairie the hike was along an asphalt road so people driving in cars going to see the hermitage could get up nice and quick. This provided no scenic change whatsoever and the whole trip was up hill, the WHOLE thing! After about an hour and a half of steady up hill walking and thinking to myself "left foot.....right foot..... good job" we got to a picnic table.

We sat and rested, then realized that my mom had taken the water. This lead to a slight mental and physical breakdown. We were pulled from our misery by a line of cars speeding up the road like they were just strolling through the park on a nice spring day. Some of them saw us on the side of the road and looked at us like- "OMG what are THEY doing? Saint Francis totally didn't WALK all the way up there. He drove here in his Mercedes like us!" Yeah, right.

We walked along this road for a while longer and tried to make as many short cuts as possible. We eventually got to the hermitage, met up with my mom, and walked around. The little building itself was full of small corridors and even smaller door frames with figures from a manger around every tiny corner. Rough stone was all it was made out of and the light from the candles danced off the walls making them shine with placid golden light.

Once we got through that, we went out into the forest behind the building and saw many of the caves where the monks would pray in solitude including Francis. It was very interesting and worth the long and withering trek up the mountain side.

On our way back down we did walk with mom and saw one of the most beautiful things any of us had ever seen. It was a sunset. That might not describe it correctly for you. It was the vast valley below us with a ball of pure gold gliding down behind the mist covered mountains across the plane. The light from this sphere washed across the whole valley like a blanket of strong even painful golden beauty. The trees that dotted the landscape below stopped the light when it hit them thus making long dark shadows mix with the shine of the sun.

It was eye openly gorgeous and it really made us feel as though, of course, people would go up there to feel heavenly and spiritual.

It was a good hike on the way down (I mentioned that the way up was constantly up hill) and by the time we got back to our house the sky was pretty much dark with just a hint of the leftover sunset tinting the billowing clouds orange and violet.

Love to you all!

WM ️